Siegfried Sassoon - Suicide in the Trenches

Suicide in the trenches
Title and Author: “Suicide in the Trenches” is a poem written by Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon wrote this poem during his First World War military service and published in his 1918 collection: “Counter-Attack and Other Poems”

Form and styleThis poem is a lyric which contains of three stanzas each containing four lines. This is written in rhyming couplets, the style of the poem seems very simple and song-like War is destructive of youth and innocence. There is a change in mood where the first stanza talks about the despair when he is in the trenches. In the third stanza we move to the poet’s anger about the way that people at home feel Each stanza has four lines with a pattern of a-a-b-b-c-c-d-d-e-e-f-f. Main Themes, ideas and perspectives about war:

This poem talks about the survival of a young soldier who survived, addressing to the people left at home of all the hardships that they go through in the trenches. These demonstrate:
* Destructive effects of the war.
* Anger at the glorification of war
* Disillusionment
* The corruption of innocence
* Wastefulness of the war: futility
* Evil tramping over good

Structural features and effects * The poem is separated into three stanzas which have four lines each. The verses rhyme with the next in pairs of two (a-a-b-b, c-c-d-d, e-e-f-f) and all the verses have eight syllables. * Each verse has a different tone

* Description of the ‘soldier boy’ which makes us compassionate and give more concern * The poet criticizes the attitudes of people towards war when they know nothing about the reality of war. The poet wants the reader to feel guilty.

Language, Tone and Vocabulary * In this poem the poet uses adjectives creating an interesting feeling and he creates the horror of the battlefields. * Sassoon conveys his feelings and concerns towards the ‘soldier boy’ who has lost his innocence because of the war and he also shows his anger for the...

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...Siegfried Sasson
SiegfriedSassoon was born on 8 September 1886 in Matfield, Kent. His father, Alfred Ezra Sassoon, was part of a wealthy Jewish merchant family, originally from Iran and India, and his mother part of the artistic Thorneycroft family. Siegfried had one older brother, Michael, born in October 1884, and one younger brother, Hamo, born in 1887. His parents separated when he was very young, meaning that in his younger years he saw his father only rarely. Alfred died of consumption in 1895.
As a child Siegfried was prone to illness, and spent many hours reading and writing poetry. He was sent to study at the New Beacon School in Kent in 1900, followed by Marlborough College in 1902. Sassoon studied at Cambridge University but he left after a year without a degree. For the next eight years, he lived the life of a country gentleman, hunting and playing cricket while also publishing small volumes of poetry. Published privately, Sassoon's poetry made very little impact on the critics or the book buying public.
Siegfried joined the Sussex Yeomanry on 4th August 1914, the day that England declared war, but soon after broke his arm in a hunting accident. He received his commission as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers in May 1915, he was posted to the Western Front in France. Considered to be recklessly brave, he soon...

...﻿“They” by SiegfriedSassoon
The poem exists out of two stanzas, with a rhyme pattern of ababcc dedeff. The tone of the poem appears to be a little sarcastic and mocking. The poem is a direct conversation between a Bishop and boys (soldiers), it can be seen by the use of the double quotations. I assume for the boys to be soldiers as they know the other soldiers by their names.
In line 1-6 the Bishop, is telling the boys that when the soldiers return from the war, they will not be the same again, and he states the reasons why. The boys’ response to this can be seen in line 7-11. The boys are of the opinion that yes they will not be the same again, but not for the reason the Bishop has listed. The Bishops only response to this is to say that “the ways of God is strange” as can be seen in line 12.
In the first line the Bishop starts a conversation with the soldiers. The semicolon that is used in line 2, forces the reader to take a longer pause, as what follows is an explanation of why the soldiers will not be the same again. As the Bishop is of the opinion that the soldiers have fought in a cause (line 2), the cause being the war. In line 4 a colon is used to list the reasons why they have changed. The reasons being, “they lead the last attack On Anti-Christ” (line 3), the word last is used to indicate that they were the survivors of the war and were the ones to be part of the last attack on the enemy. The Bishop refers to the...

...Introduction : Siegfried Sassoon’s poem, Suicide in the trenches, successfully demonstrates conflict during a world war through its form, meaning and structure. a STEP-UP analysis clearly reveals the conflict conveyed in this poem.
Subject matter: the poem is about the depression of a young soldier. The depression of this young soldier before he commits suicide is clearly displayed in the poem. At the start of the poem, the image of a happy, young, and perhaps rather naïve boy is placed before us;
‘Simple’ tells us that he is innocent, perhaps rather naïve, and doesn’t understand the concept of war.
‘Grinned at life in empty joy’ suggests to us that he was pleased by anything, a happy young man. He was young and had no worries because he enjoyed life and did as he pleased. He made life seem easy and happy even when times were bad.
‘Slept soundly through the lonesome dark’ tells us that the dark did not afraid him. We can think from this line that perhaps he would never sleep soundly again after spending time in the trenches, as dark meant the threat of attack there.
‘Whistled with the early lark’ creates an image of a rather enthusiastic young man who awoke bright and early, and was happy to be awake and living. Again, we can gather from this that in the trenches, men were not happy to wake, and to them, living meant pain. As ‘lark’ is a spring bird, it seems to represent here...

...Glory of Women – SiegfriedSassoon
You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops "retire"
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood.
O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.
SiegfriedSassoon was one of the great war poets of World War I, as well as a military hero and an admired writer of prose. He became known as a writer of satirical anti-war verse during the First World War, where he offered a violent yet realistic representation of war, through his poetry. ‘’Glory of Women’’ was written in 1917.
The role of women during the Great War has been portrayed in many different ways throughout poetry. In "Glory of Women’’, SiegfriedSassoon makes adequate use of irony within the structure and content in order to represent his view of the role of the young, working, British woman during this time period. It was a crucial time for women with so many men going to war and in response; women...

...SMALL BITS. AND NO ONE SEEMED TO CARE_
_EXCEPT THAT LONELY WOMAN WITH WHITE HAIR._
_The Hero by Siegfried Sassoon_
Sassoon titles his poem "The Hero," so the reader assumes the poem will praise a soldier's courage, however, the title deceives the reader as it is about a mother praises her son, fed by the lies of the military and government. The writer uses rhyming couplets and also some other rhyming patterns.
In the very first sentence, Sassoon highlights one of the main issues with the war. In the line, "Jack fell as he'd have wished," reveals a delusion on not only the mother's side but also on society's. No one wishes to die violently, especially not in a war, and believing that they do makes parents send their children off blindly to the violence occurring on the front line. The mother in the story and many others of this time and place had been brought up to be patriotic and to respect authority, and so it would have been very unlikely that these mothers would have protested against the war as they felt it was a patriotic duty of their son. Later on in stanza two, it says, "her glorious boy." This again references the idea that volunteering for the war is something to aim towards and is a noble thing to do.
By capitalizing "Mother", Sassoon makes her not only the soldier's mother but also makes her a personification of Britain and it's soldiers, her children. Therefore, Sassoon is suggesting...

...﻿“The Effect”
by SiegfriedSassoon
The Effect is about destroying the myth of death as either a desirable end for enemies, or a heroic resolution for patriotic soldiers. The poem follows the interior monologue of a soldier who has spoken to a war correspondent (reporter) told him someone he’d interviewed had said he’d never seen so many dead before. It is simply a poem about “The Effect” of seeing so many countless dead. Sassoon in his declaration says he has “seen and endured the sufferings of the troops” and this expands the idea of how profound and devastating witnessing millions of terrible deaths can be upon the human mind. “When Dick was killed last week he looked like that, flapping along... like a fish” –this is the typical use of direct speech which is often used in Sassoon’s poetry. This animal imagery creates an ironically comical image and through this simile Sassoon is trying to prove that there is no honour or dignity in dying at war. The use of the verb “flapping” shows the helplessness of the soldier and dehumanizes him and this is effective because it evokes powerful emotions of sympathy in a reader.
It is typical of Sassoon’s poetry since the whole poem has a very bitter, painful feel to it. “Don’t count ‘em; they’re too many,” –shows the horrific extent of death that people involved in the war must have had to deal with. Through this line Sassoon shows the sheer devastation of...

...The poem "Glory of women" can be considered to be the typical style of poetry written by the English war time poet, SiegfriedSassoon. Through the use of poetic techniques, Sassoon's words had painted a picture conveying his anti-war messages, in attempt to break the popular romanticized beliefs the majority population held towards war, conveying the ignorance of the public, however at the same time praising the love and dedication of the women on the home front.
Sassoon's poem "Glory of women" can be categorized as a war time lyric poem. Like all lyric poems, Sassoon had expressed a single speaker's thoughts of fear and general state of mind through his work. The poem began with a scenario of an ideal image of war and how it was made to be perceived subsequent to the government's propaganda. The first two lines had depicted the successfulness of the false ideas of war that has been placed in the minds of women. The ignorance of women back on the homefront was shown through the use of words in the first few lines of the poem. One of such examples is the use of "you", by establishing a second person throughout the poem, "you", directed at women creates an emotional distance between the audience and women. The use of second person establishes the idea that during war, women were ignorant outsiders, who relied solely on the media.
Sassoon had successfully invited the essence of an ideal image of the war into the...

...POETRY
With the poems of SiegfriedSassoon we are moving from the conventional way of writing in the approach of the issue of war, in what sense???
First of all his approach is an anti- war approach , he is not encouraging young people to join the war , he speaking of war as being a cause of death.
Because he is less conventional; he is less traditional , he is writing poems labeled until now as anti war poems , we find the division of his sentences, rhyme in words, the division of the poem into 2 stanzas, conversational style, we can say that he is turning to heritage that is used by the modernists .
If we are to examine this poem with other poems from the modern literature , we will find that it does complete some of the demands of modern poetry , he is different from Rupert Brooke, he was conventional dismissing the modern approach he was delaying the modern trends, but as for Sassoon because he is writing in a subject matter different complete from him he was able to turn to the new trend.
Who is SiegfriedSassoon???
He is a young man from a wealthy family he is a soldier he was interesting in hunting, he had been face to face with war different from Brooke he had more than one injury, he was closer to the real experience , was an English poet, and an author. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both...